Before we begin, I made some web pages this weekend. They're both pretty
lame, and they're just there as placeholders, one so people can't see the
crap that I save in my web directory and the
second because I haven't
updated my web page in the computer science department at school in
forever, so I thought that it was time for a change.

At this risk of sounding like a crazy person, I feel like there are bugs
crawling all over my skin. This started sometime this afternoon after I
had left the office after telling them that I was quitting and that, on an
unrelated note, I was going to have to leave early and take a day or so
off to attend a funeral, when I had walked back to my apartment through
one of the hottest most disgusting days in a while (not that it was
particularly hot today but just that it was hotter than many in the recent
past and that i don't adjust well to the heat anyway) and was all sweaty
and gross. It was then when I first realized that it felt like there were
bugs crawling all over my skin. I attributed those feelings to the fact
that I was hot and gross. I attribute the feelings of bugs crawling all
over my skin now to the fact that there are actually bugs crawling all
over my skin, be it a defective screen somewhere in this house (the house
being not my house, but rather the house that i grew up in, my parents'
house), or that bugs just get into suburban houses really well.

Oh, allow me to back up for a moment. I did quit my job today. That
was not a slip of the tongue (where the tongue would in fact be the
fingers, but to use a phrase) or anything resembling wishful thinking. I
did in fact tell my employers and coworkers (all two of them,
collectively) that the match between myself and the company was not
actually a match at all but something more like taking a bunny rabbit and
sticking it to a porcupine. I mean you could do it, but why would you
want to?

And of course I didn't actually use that example and just mentioned that
it just wasn't working for me and all that. And then I had to shuffle
back here where I will be attending the funeral tomorrow for my uncle, my
father's brother. On the train1 here (home, for what it's
worth) I would find myself realizing, quite suddenly, why I was returning,
and would find my eyes begin to well up. Not so much as to actually cause
any tearing, for it is a rare occassion when I find myself so taken by
something that it actually evokes (or, more to the point, I allow it to
evoke) any sort of real reaction from me. These things do put life into
perspective though.

Which would seem appropriate enough given my recent resolve to leave my
job for personal reasons rather than wholly professional ones. To say
"I'm not getting paid enough" could be construed as shallow, but
understandable in the industry today where, I have noted, it is the job of
the high tech worker to make oodles of money. On the other hand, to say
"I'm not happy doing what I'm doing and doing it here so I am going to
leave and find something that makes me happy" is more of a rarity and, I
think, a much harder sell, personally. I have almost learned to equate
personal wealth with personal happiness and it has taken me a long time to
learn to separate them.

What comes next in my life is a mystery. A return to New York is
inevitable, but the path I take there might wind around a bit.

1. Travel by train is one of the more relaxing experiences I can
imagine. As long as I do not really need to be anywhere in a timely
manner, Amtrak provides me with enough leg room to be comfortable, the
reassuring clunk clunk of the tracks rolling by beneath me, and more
people watching opportunities than I could hope for. Watching the world
go by, while still being a part of it, is something that travel by air can
never allow for.